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[Heron TSG]

And yeah, you better believe a huge amount of hostility against Obama is due to his skin color. Nobody will admit it, but come on.

And then there are those that admit it, like my dad's arch-conservative half of the family. An actual quote from my grandfather: "I remember when we didn't even have to share bathrooms with them damn [n-words], now one's running the country!?" I don't talk politics with them.

[kuro_suna]

I get the feeling the GOP is eventually going to split into a libertarian and christian conservative party, or would have already if the American political system wasn't made for two parties.

[Little]

I get the feeling the GOP is eventually going to split into a libertarian and christian conservative party, or would have already if the American political system wasn't made for two parties.

QFT. I know people who are ashamed to be Republicians due to being associated with the 'crazy' people, but don't want to support a third party because of the two-party system.

[nenjin]

Your word is good enough for me, until you start doing things that make you sound like a Republican. Please explain how this is either ironic or hypocritical.

Really? Because that's not what you said in your last post. And you know what? "Sounds like a Republican" is the exact same kind of crap, coming from the Demo side, that Republicans do to their own party to get them to fall in line. I don't have justify my party label, not to you, or anyone. But do go on about how, if I don't sound like a democrat to you, there's a chance I'm not one.

In light of the whole birther debate, yeah, you sound like a total hypocrite. "He says he's American, but he looks foreign to me."

When comparing the responses to Bush's presidency with the responses to Obama's presidency, what Bush's behavior actually was is a key part of the discussion.

A key part of the discussion is what his behavior wasn't, as well. True to form, you can't get beyond the fact that yes, he done bad. And you're going to cling that as proof of something, even when it has nothing to do with what we're talking about: people going off the deep end. Just because GW was "bad" doesn't mean everything that came out of democrats mouths was the Gospel. A large portion of it wasn't. I'll give you that democrats had more legitimate complaints by far; that didn't stop them from going too far plenty of times as well. And since there's no Republicans willing to speak up here, you're not going to hear a Republican's take on what Obama has done that actually bothered them.

It's not link spam, it's citing my sources, something which your posts could benefit from. For instance: please link to where you disagreed with a policy move of Obama's, and where I called you a "bad Democrat" or "the enemy" for doing so. In the alternative, please explain why you're bringing that up there if you're not trying to imply I did it.

I disagreed that he drug his ass on campaign promises. Guantanmo is still functioning. It took him almost his whole term to move on DADT. He soaks up more media spotlight than some major celebrities. I've seen him spend more time on talk shows then it seems like Bush spent at his ranch in Crawford. His rail system initiative was a hamfisted attempt at a New Deal sort of program, and it's still totally misguided.

I've got plenty of things I know that I don't need to go to Google to pad my arguments.

[Zangi]

This recent back and forth has been hilarious... considering it.

"O shiz guys, this guy says he is a *insert political spectrum*, but leans *insert opposite political spectrum* in some issues!  Itz a spah!  Get im!"

[Africa]

Whoa, wait, what was Obama's rail system initiative? I want America to have halfway decent trains.

[RedKing]

Whoa, wait, what was Obama's rail system initiative? I want America to have halfway decent trains.

Yeah, his initiative was basically "Build some trains! We'll do a feasibility study." Guess the first thing that got dropped when the budget talks stalled months ago?

As much as I would love decent railways myself, the fact is we're not demographcially cut out for it. Trains make sense in places like southern California or the Northeast Corridor, because there's a f**kton of people in a relatively small area. Not so much for Kansas. But being that this is America, any attempts to build in those areas would be cast as "luxury toys for commie liberal hotbeds like California and New York, paid for by the sweat and toil of the good people of the Heartland who won't get trains".

There's also the issue of how cities are laid out here. We've talked about high-speed light rail in NC for years now. And while I would love to be able to cheaply hop a train to Greensboro or Charlotte, the problem is that once I got there, I'd be screwed without a car. There's just not enough mass transit in the cities themselves to get to all points needed, and the cities themselves are sprawled out in patches all over.


Sorry, guess this was sort of a thread derail. About rail.

[Africa]

Yeah, all those things are problems. And of course God forbid we should plan ahead for when driving is no longer affordable for the average citizen. Well, I guess the east coast already has decent trains so I can be happy about that.

[nenjin]

His heart was in the right place. He looked at Europe's high speed rail system, versus our infrastructure which is falling apart and went "yeah, that sounds like a good 15 year investment plan." Except he tried to sell it as a job creator, economy-saver. And just sort of started handing money out to the states, some of which said "We'll pass on the railroad thanks, but we'll take the money."

It works for Europe because a high speed rail is connecting local and regional economies in ways they haven't been before. We've had rail in the US for almost a century now, our industry is still party reliant on it. Upgrading to a high speed rail system doesn't really add anything we don't already have in some capacity, as opposed to the European high speed rail system which, you know, cuts through mountains and shit to link two different countries together.

Not to like, prop up our rail system or anything, which is borderline substandard right now as far as passengers are concerned. Americans just aren't in love with rail travel like they once were. Partly that's because our passenger rail ways got shitty and consolidated in the 80s, and had a few accidents to taint public opinion on top of that. Upgrading our rail system might make more people like to travel by rail, but I don't think it'd really make a dent in our foreign oil consumption, pollution or any of that. The jobs bit might have been debatable, but again, when states didn't even want to adopt it, it never had a chance to succeed anyways. Massive public works programs may have worked during the depression, but the economy at the consumer level is just a wee bit different than it used to be then.

[RedKing]

Honestly, I think more people would buy into rail if instead of passenger cars, everyone rode in hermetically-sealed individual pods. I think a lot of American resistance to mass transit is that we simply don't like being forced to wait in an enclosed space with strangers.

[DJ]

IDK, high speed trains might attract passengers. It's much faster than driving and much cheaper than flying. Well, it might actually be faster than flying too, if you count all the airport BS you have to go through before you board.

[RedKing]

And with podcasting and iPads and such now, people actually have something to do while they ride. I'd LOVE taking the train to the beach (instead of a 2-4 hour drive, depending on which beach) or to the mountains or even to dodge the 75-minute drive to where I grew up.

Although if it got popular, there'd eventually be a lot of security to go through for trains too. Right now, a train might be the safest form of mass transit in the US, because most would be an incredibly poor target for terrorists. We see and hear news all the time about trains derailing or overturning, and a handful of people killed, and most people don't even think five seconds about it because they never ride one. It'd be like hearing about a plot to poison camel saddles. Not really a major concern for most people.

[Gorjo MacGrymm]

And yeah, you better believe a huge amount of hostility against Obama is due to his skin color. Nobody will admit it, but come on. The generation that harrassed little black girls for daring to go to a white school is still alive. You think there's no hardcore racists left?

Ahh, you mean the Democratic Establishent?  Those guys are who are in charge now.

[Nadaka]

And yeah, you better believe a huge amount of hostility against Obama is due to his skin color. Nobody will admit it, but come on. The generation that harrassed little black girls for daring to go to a white school is still alive. You think there's no hardcore racists left?

Ahh, you mean the Democratic Establishent?  Those guys are who are in charge now.

That is ridiculous. You know damn well that most of the racists left the Democratic party to form the American Independent party with George Wallace and were then more or less reabsorbed into the Republican base over the next few decades.

[Africa]

Honestly, I think more people would buy into rail if instead of passenger cars, everyone rode in hermetically-sealed individual pods. I think a lot of American resistance to mass transit is that we simply don't like being forced to wait in an enclosed space with strangers.

Trains would definitely benefit from having an affordable option to sit in four- or six-passenger compartments like you always see in old-timey movies...or the Hogwarts Express. And semi-affordable sleeping cars.

I don't know what exactly is the cause of people's dislike of trains, and it could just be that everyone's used to cars and, well, Amtrak blows. But again, spending even a fraction of the money that goes into maintaining highways on passenger rail could help eliminate delays and upgrade quality. You still have the problem of trains not being accessible to many people, but there doesn't have to be a train station in every village either. Even if you have to drive an hour (or even three hours if you live in the middle of nowhere...i.e. midwest) to get to the train station, if the train saves you enough time and money (not to mention the convenience of sitting back and relaxing and having the option to get up and moving around without stopping the trip) it would still make sense to use it on cross-country trips. As fuel gets more expensive I can see this making more and more sense for more people.

As it is now, it's usually faster to drive, which is a bit ridiculous. It doesn't have to be that way.

Ahh, you mean the Democratic Establishent?  Those guys are who are in charge now.

Do you ever post things that make sense?